Giacometti’s work breaks auction record
A sculpture by Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti has smashed the world record for an art work at auction, selling in London for 65 million pounds ( $104.3 million), Sotheby’s said. “L’homme qui marche I”, a life-size bronze statue of a man, was expected to go for up to $29 million at the sale Wednesday - but an anonymous telephone buyer paid almost four times that amount. It beat the previous record for a work at auction set by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso’s painting “Garcon a la Pipe” which was bought for $104.2 million in New York in 2004, said the auction house.
Bidders at the auction snapped up a string of other sought after art works, bringing in more than $235 million and making it the highest value sale ever staged in London, according to Sotheby’s. The auction house hailed an “exceptional” result after a dramatic bidding battle forced up the price of Giacometti’s work. “L’homme qui marche I” (Walking Man I) fetched exactly $104,327,006, which included the buyer’s premium, said the auctioneers. The 1961 metal figure, by the leading 20th century artist known for his stick-thin sculptures of the human form, was sold by German banking firm Commerzbank, said Sotheby’s.
The auction house said Wednesday’s sale opened at 12 million pounds, but after eight minutes of “fast and furious bidding” between at least 10 prospective purchasers, it went to the anonymous telephone bidder. “The price is a reflection of the extraordinary importance of this exceptionally rare work,” said Helena Newman, of Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art department. Georgina Adam, editor-at-large of The Art Newspaper, attended the auction and hailed the “astonishing” price paid for the “one in a lifetime opportunity”. “There were so many bidders chasing to get it that even before it was put up for sale somebody had started bidding,” she told the BBC.
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